City Life

Shorthand experienced its heyday in the years immediately following the Civil War. As the end of the 19th century approached, many reporters began to swear off its usefulness, saying that shorthand's time had passed, and that it was no longer worth the significant effort required to learn it. By the early 1890's, the century's practice…Read more The Rise and Fall of Shorthand in Victorian-Era America

"Are you a good sleuth?" The headline teased, from the Lowell Sun's front page. One hundred years ago, on Saturday, September 21, 1912, the newspaper invited all would-be sleuths to Lowell's Merrimack Square (today's Kearney Square) that night, at 8 PM, 'sharp'. One lucky sleuth, they claimed, would win $100 ($2300 in today's dollars) if…Read more In Search of Good Sleuths: A Downtown Lowell Treasure Hunt, 1912

Things have to get fairly dire before your entire student body, well, 97% of your student body, boycotts your school due to "dangerous conditions". But, that's precisely what happened at Lowell's Riverside School on a Monday morning in late March, 1971. Of the school's 205 students in Grades K through 5, just six showed up…Read more Lowell’s Riverside School: The Lowell Parents’ Strike – 1971

If you've spent any time researching ancestors, or the history of your town, or even history in general, you've likely come across old group photographs. A workplace outing from long ago, an annual gathering of some institution or society, or maybe a family gathering. If you've stared into the faces of those who gathered for…Read more Lost Stories and Found Mysteries: Old Group Photographs

As news of World War I and Spanish flu filled the local papers, the first headlines related to Billerica’s car shop murder almost could have gone unnoticed. In fact, the murder itself went unnoticed for several days. The last anyone had seen of Fred Soulia, an employee at Billerica’s Boston & Maine car shops (today’s…Read more The Billerica Car Shop Murder of 1918

A steady stream of ten boys, each jumping from the classroom windows of the Rainsford Island House of Reformation, sprinted for the shore under the cover of the night fog on August 19, 1899. They found their way through the brush by the light of the fire that raged through their prison behind them. As…Read more Jailbreak at Rainsford Island – Boston Harbor: August 1899